


Ramblings

by that_sea_sponge



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27552709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_sea_sponge/pseuds/that_sea_sponge
Summary: This takes place during the ending of season 14 and the beginning of season 15.  An alternate exploration of how Cas may have tried to tell Dean he loves him and the conflict that would have caused earlier in the season.Dean and Cas are fighting and Sam, unfortunately, has taken some papers out of Cas's room.Look folks, I gotta warn you, due to ....recent events, the entire ending of the story that I had planned will need to be changed.  I need to give my #spnfamily something more uplifting right now. I've never had so many people actively subscribed to an ongoing work so I wanted to give you a heads up.  What was a canon compliant piece based on the presumption of an in-text romantic ending, will no longer be canon compliant.  I'm sorry if that's a deal breaker for you. If you wish, stay tuned for loads of "off camera" romantic hijinks and taking my liberties way too far! Love you all.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure how long this is yet, bear with me.

“Hey, Cas?”, Sam asked and knocked briskly on the Angel’s bedroom door. He waited a second and turned the knob. It was never locked and the door sprang right open. Castiel’s room looked as unlived in as usual. The twin bed was immaculately made, mostly because it was never slept in. If Castiel kept many personal belongings, it wasn’t apparent by the bare walls or empty shelving. The only outward indication that someone had been in the room recently was the lack of dust and a yellow, legal-sized pad of paper on the desk. Several sheets of paper were pulled off of the pad and lay in an untidy heap beside it - some balled up, some neatly folded. 

Sam looked back out to the empty bunker hallway before stepping across the room’s threshold. It felt odd being in Cas’s room like some creeper, but the angel was the one who asked that Sam meet him here. Sam sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, before thinking that really made him look like a creeper, so then he stood by the desk. He weighed the creep factor of taking a seat at the desk’s chair, when he saw his name in capital letters and darker print on one of the sheets of torn out paper. 

Thinking Cas might have left him a note, Sam glanced towards the door again before picking up the mess of pages. The pages were full of Castiel’s unique handwriting. At first glance, Sam saw a lot of words or entire lines scratched out, arrows to different words, and even some writing across the sides and margins of the pages. Unable to stop himself now, Sam began to scan some of the words. There were a lot of sentences that began with “I” and Sam and Dean’s names featured quite a bit. It looked like maybe a letter or a diary. 

Sam flipped through a page or two when he heard heavy boots approaching the door. He’d just been able to fold the paper together in the palm of his hand, hidden behind his back when Dean made it to the doorway. Dean popped his head in the room and looked around. 

“What’re you doing?,” Dean asked with a pinched expression.. 

“I, uh, was leaving a note for Cas,” Sam gestured to the notepad on the desk with his empty hand.. 

Dean rolled his eyes. “C’mon, we’ve got to get on the road if we want to make it out of state by night fall. 

Sam fidgeted with the paper behind his back. “Yeah, sure, just let me finish this note.” 

“You can text him,” Dean motioned with both arms that Sam should leave the room immediately. Sam realized there was no way he could discretely place the pages on the desk now. He hoped Cas wouldn’t be too angry with him as he slipped the folded pages into his back pocket.

  


Nine. That was how many times Dean replayed the same tired Zeppelin album on his worn out cassette in his crappy, archaic tape deck. Nine. Sam did attempt to drown out the grating, static filled cacophony with his own music, but Dean glared at him until he took his airpods out. Sam slumped against the passenger door and bumped his head against the glass. This was meant to be a thirteen hour road trip and Sam used up both of his rest stop requests three hours in. His phone was about to die and he hadn’t had time to pack the right charger for his laptop or tablet. 

_This is what my hell would really be,_ Sam mused. _An eternal road trip with Dean in one of his moods and those same fucking songs over and over and over. Even Cas would’ve told him to knock this shit off by now_. Sam sighed, knowing that the tension between Dean and Cas was exactly why Dean was in this mood. Then Sam remembered the folded paper in his back pocket. _Shit shit shit, I should probably text Cas and let him know I have this. That’ll go well. Oh hey Cas, so you know those really personal looking papers you left on your desk?_ Annoyed with himself more than Dean at this point, Sam uncomfortably reached to his back pocket and slid out the paper with one hand and grasped his phone with the other, attempting to compose an adequately apologetic message in his head. He tapped the edge of the pages on his forehead in frustration. 

“You alright over there?” Dean spoke for the first time in two hours. 

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “I’m just tired and I’ve got this-” Sam waved the folded yellow paper around, “...research that I don’t know what to do with.” 

Dean nodded. “Ok. How about we make an early stop for the night?” 

Sam’s eyes went wide. This has to be a trap. “Uh, you sure?” 

Dean nodded again. “Yeah, why not? A night at a shitty motel with shitty cable tv doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world right now. Unless you want to keep goin’?” 

Sam blinked. _Is escaping Hell this easy? I should’ve thought of this years ago._ “Ah, no, no. A stop sounds fine”. 

Dean pulled the Impala into a cracked, uneven roadside motel parking lot about twenty minutes later and Sam sprang from the door, bag in hand, before the car was even fully stopped. The sound of a domestic argument ringing from one of the hotel rooms was like an angelic choir to Sam’s ears, relative to yet another playthrough of Swan Song. Sam spotted the hotel’s requisite shitty coke machine and made a sprint for it. He didn’t normally like soda, but drinking one...or two would give Dean enough time to turn the car off and find them a room. 

Searching for change, Sam’s fingers found the creased edges of Cas’s paper in his front pocket. “Shit!”. Sam pulled out the pages, angry with himself that he’d forgotten about them. The faded, but still carbonated off brand soda hissed appropriately as Sam popped it open and he glared at the pages, wondering if it wouldn’t just be easier to throw them away. “They’re probably not private or important,” Sam chided himself. “Since when does Cas even have private, important papers?” There’s only one way to find out. He took a breath, unfolded the pages with one hand and read from the very top of the first page. 

_According to the entities of Heaven, there is no being more abhorrent than a Fallen Angel. Everyone and everything believes that if an Angel can turn their back on Heaven, there is no limit to their wickedness. You’ve met Lucifer. For all of those things that go bump in the night, just imagining those unrepressed, depraved acts keeps them tantalized for centuries. I fell to save humanity from the unjust machinations of Heaven. No. That’s not true and all of Heaven and Hell knows it. I fell because Dean Winchester looked me in the eyes and begged me to help. Because for all of its faults, Humanity is worth saving. I believed that then and I stand by it now._

_Somewhere along the way, I became The Winchesters’ Pet Angel. Occasionally, perching on their shoulders, trying to help them keep fighting, but more often, slaughtering the Hosts of Heaven and Hell at their command. A holy warrior turned sinful, subservient mercenary. You can imagine the whispered conversations this caused in all of the Realms, bolstered every time I chose Humanity - Dean - over my duty and followed the boys home at the end of it all. I let them think what they like and most have become less inhibited with sharing their thoughts about what being The Winchesters’ Angel really means. I find that when my opponent thinks the worst of me, that gives me power. After all, what else am I capable of?_

“Room 121.” Dean’s voice ripped Sam’s focus from the page. Dean squinted at him from a few feet away. Dean waggled the oversized hotel key fob at him. “You wanna get some lunch first? There was a fast food joint about a mile back?” 

Sam glanced at the papers and then over to the car, with a resigned sigh. 

“We can walk?”, Dean suggested. There was something in Dean’s tone that made Sam’s fraternal spidey sense ping. 

“Sure.” Sam regarded his brother cautiously. From the tips of his unbrushed hair to the toes of his steel toed work boots, Dean radiated sadness and discomfort. Sam folded up Cas’s...diary, autobiography, whatever, into his back pocket and joined his brother. 

The brothers Winchester walked in slow silence towards the budget fast food place for a long time. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Dean look at him, but when he looked up, Dean would look away. 

“So, what’s up?” Sam entreated. 

“Nothin’.” Dean frowned and nodded. 

Sam rolled his eyes. “Dean, whatev-” 

"How’s the research, Sammy? Find anything...worth anything?” 

Sam groaned internally, it was going to be one of THOSE conversations. “The research is uh, going well. Cas is helping a lot.” 

“Good, good,” Dean nodded. 

“No, Dean, it’s not good. You’re not good. You and Cas aren’t good -” Sam watched as his brother dipped his head and grimaced - “When you guys aren’t good, I’m not good. No one is good here, Dean.” Sam was surprised by his own level of annoyance. That felt good. 

Dean nodded slowly again. “Look, don’t worry about Cas, Cas is...Cas.” 

“And you’re you, which is why I’m worried about Cas. C’mon Dean, stop bullshitting me. What’s bothering you?” 

“It’s the whole thing with mom and with Jack and Cas. You know. He knew better.” 

“So did we.” Sam stopped and stared down at his older brother. “Stop blaming Cas for everything.” 

“I’m not blaming him for everything. I’m blaming him for...him.” 

“Sometimes I wonder if you remember who Cas was before we met him. What he did.” 

“Oh, I remember Sammy. I spent the first couple of years trying to keep both of us from getting smited for some damn reason or another. He was the holy douchebag, judging us, spying on us, and ruining everything he touched.” Dean shook his head and began to walk again. “He’s still ruining everything he touches. He hasn’t learned anything.” 

“You can’t say that. Cas is the best friend we have left.” 

“And why is that, huh, Sam? Think about it. We had Bobby, until Cas released the Leviathans from Purgatory. Jo got ripped apart by hellhounds and Ellen blew herself up because-” 

“They were trying to save us!”, Sam interjected. 

"That ain’t how I remember it.” Dean lifted his hand and began counting on digits. “Rufus. Kevin. Charlie. All dead because Cas couldn’t do the right thing or he let himself be manipulated or was just plain evil. He even kills his own best friends. Balthazar? Samandriel? He’s broken you more than once.” 

Sam shook his head, glad that the greasy fast food joint was now in sight. “Bullshit. Bobby, Ellen, Jo, and Rufus were all hunters, they knew the risks. Charlie was translating the Book of the Damned and _I _was more responsible for Kevin. For the record, Cas has also pulled us both out of Hell and a lot of the times he has screwed up, it was because he was really trying to do the right thing, but didn’t have all of the right information. We’re just as guilty of that.”__

____

__

“We don’t claim to be holy or to be God. We’re not older than the planet. We don’t have divine knowledge and can’t smite Demons with our minds and shit - “ 

Sam raised his hand to interrupt and remind Dean that he can, in fact, smite demons with his mind and shit, but Dean wouldn’t let him get a word out. “You and I have been victims of Cas and his kin for over 10 years now. Now there’s Jack. I am sick of it, Sammy. Losing mom again, man, that was it. I’m done.” 

“You don’t get to be done just because our kid takes after his parents.”, Sam hissed as, ahead of him, Dean pushed open the glass door to the restaurant. Sam knows Dean heard him, even as he pretends not to. 

The two ordered from the extremely unhealthy menu and, once having taken possession of their greasy bags from the friendly looking cashier, took a booth near the back of the dining room. Dean dove into his dripping fries, without a word, and Sam sighed - his big brother was especially broody today and Sam knew he’d hit a very raw nerve. 

“So, Wights?” Dean licked a glob of ketchup off of the corner of his mouth and looked at Sam expectantly. 

It took Sam a few seconds to process the change in conversation. “Uh, yeah, the case. I guess it depends if you mean Chaucer Wight or Tolkien Wight. The lore isn’t really clear on how or if they’re different from Revenants.” 

“Salt and Silver then?” 

Sam shifted to grab his phone from his back pocket and the folded bundle of papers tumbled out onto the table. Dean sighed and Sam slowly pushed the pages under the carton for his fries before opening a document on his phone. “That’s where I’d start. If nothing else, we can try fire, decapitation, or maybe resolve whatever lingering issue it has with the living.” 

“I vote for fire. I’m not in the mood to have a heart to heart with a reanimated corpse.” 

“You and me both,” Sam agreed, replacing his phone in his pocket and absentmindedly tapping Cas’s papers on the table. 

Dean frowned. “Alright, back to the hotel, then? We can make Crownpoint by this time tomorrow. I’m gonna hit the head before we head out.” 

“And maybe hit on the cute cashier on your way to the toilet?”, Sam mused. 

Dean winked and grabbed his and Sam’s garbage as he rose from the booth. 

Sam glanced down and his eyes were drawn to a bit of handwriting that was visible above the fold Sam had made in the pages. 

_A Fallen Angel never forgets they’re not human. I am a thing that is incomprehensibly beyond them. That’s not ego, that’s a warning. While I desperately crave the trappings of family, friends, the minutiae of life, I cannot experience them with the same insistent totality humans do. Humans have a brief time on this planet, so to love, hold on, to be...they must do so with their whole being, after all, this is their one life. Humans are ill-at-ease with beings that don’t share this perspective or that...transcend it._

Sam pulled his eyes towards the cash register, seeing his brother making a joke to the woman behind the counter. She covered her mouth shyly as she laughed. Sam knew where this was heading. Castiel suddenly seemed much more sagacious than Sam had ever given him credit for. Sam decided to head back to the hotel on his own.

  


It was well past dark when Dean stumbled into the hotel room. He stank of whisky, cigarettes, and body odor. Sam crinkled his nose and looked up from his phone to his brother. “You don’t think you’re getting too old for this?” 

“I’m more worried that you think there is an age limit to seeking out companionship, Sammy.” Dean slid out of his wrinkled shirts and the Whisky smell became more intense. “ I need a shower.” 

“You need a shower,” Sam agreed. 

“Right.” Dean nodded and stumbled towards the bathroom. 

Sam frowned at his phone. Between Dean’s debauchery and Cas not responding to his texts, Sam was getting worried. One or the other of them being a complete ass is pretty normal, but when they’re both off the grid, something is very wrong. Sam brought up his and Cas’s chat log again, deciding to come clean about swiping Cas’s papers. _Hey Cas, sorry I missed you earlier. By the way, I grabbed -_ Sam cringed and backspaced, clearing out the word grabbed, _accidentally took some papers off of your desk. I’m sorry. We should be back in a few days._

There was a loud thud from the bathroom and Sam was about half off the bed before he heard “DAMMIT!” from behind the walls. “I’m glad you’re alive!”, Sam called to the wall. Resettling on the bed and looking back at his phone, Sam saw little dots bouncing on the screen that meant Cas was formulating a reply. 

_Did you read them?_

Oh. Sam’s stomach dropped. _Only a little. They looked pretty personal._

The dots danced for a minute or two. _Yeah, pretty personal._

Sam raised an eyebrow, that was a long pause for such a short sentence. _You know you can talk to me, right?_

_I treasure that, Sam, I really do. This isn’t something I know how to talk about._

_OK._ Sam was getting more confused, not less. 

_Sam?_ If a text message can be plaintive, this was it. 

_Yeah, Cas?_

_Thank you. For everything._

“Oh, that’s not worrying at all,” Sam spoke to the phone. He thought for a minute before slowly typing _No problem. That’s what brothers do._

Sam waited for a few minutes for a reply, but when none came he began to worry that he’d overplayed his hand with the “brothers” thing. His thoughts were interrupted by Dean fumbling with the bathroom door. As Dean cartoonishly flopped onto his bed, Sam said a silent prayer of thanks that Dean remembered his underwear. 

The younger Winchester started his standard news trawler, plugged in his AirPods and flicked to Netflix, reminding himself that he is not responsible for fixing whatever Dean and / or Cas have broken. Sam fell asleep right before the intro for Always Sunny started.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam woke up to see he’d fallen asleep with his computer still on his chest. Netflix’s judgmental “Are you still watching?” message was on his main browser page, but an alert made the text flicker for the second open tab - his news trawler. He shifted and brought that tab up. It was the front page for the local small-time news rag. The headline was _Woman Assaulted, Police Seek Suspect”._ Next to the headline was a police sketch that looked more than a little like his brother. Sam opened the headline page and reached over, vigorously shaking Deann’s shoulder. “DEAN! DEAN! Up! Now!”

“Christ,” Dean mumbled refusing to open his eyes. “Stop! We don’t have to leave right away”.

“DEAN! You need to see this!” Sam grabbed Dean’s arm and began to pull Dean off the mattress.

“What? Fine. Just let go.” Dean pulled his arm from Sam’s grip and opened his eyes. “This had better be fucking important.”

Sam sat back on his bed and read from the webpage. “Local police are seeking assistance after a woman was brutally attacked last night. The woman, age 30, was brought to the hospital in serious condition after the woman’s sister found her, on the floor of their shared 5th street apartment early this morning. Per the complaint, the woman states she was attacked by a man she invited over last night. The woman states the date ended amicably and she watched the suspect leave her building and start walking westward. However, a short time later, the man reappeared at her door, demanding to be let in. When she refused, the suspect broke in her door and proceeded to physically assault her.”

Dean blinked a couple of times, obviously annoyed. “People suck, Sam. That doesn’t concern us.”

Sam turned his laptop so that Dean could see the enlarged police sketch.

Dean stared at the image and gulped. “That’s concerning.”

“Yeah,” Sam snapped his laptop closed and stared expectantly at his brother.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve never put hands on a woman who wasn’t also trying to kill me.”

“I know that!”, Sam raked his fingers through his hair, “but she obviously thinks otherwise. Why would she think that.”

“I don’t know man. We were on really good terms when I left, I promise,” Dean smiled a little cockily.

“Focus, Dean. What do you remember from last night?”

“We...spent some time together. Had some drinks. Spent some more time together. I saw how late it was getting and left. Turned around and came right back here.”

“Did anything unusual happen? Did anything feel weird?”

“What? No. Nothing. Standard issue, small town hookup.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “We should leave, Dean. There were at least a dozen people in that greasy burger yesterday and we don’t know how early our hotel manager reads the paper.”

“I doubt the man can read.” Dean fell back on his bed and the next time he spoke, he sounded very tired. “What are the odds of this being mistaken identity instead of some messed up supernatural bullshit? Because if there is some shifter or witch using my face to attack women...goddammit.”

“Well, we can’t exactly ask the victim. She saw me with you yesterday.”

“Betty. Her name is Betty.”

“Betty,” Sam emphasized the woman’s name, “Can pick me out of a line up as easily as she can pick you. If I run around town flashing a fake badge and trying to get evidence, she could find out and then we’d both be screwed. We don’t know this is our kinda thing, it doesn’t have to be. Like you said, it could be some awful coincidence.”

“Knowing us? Our luck? Are you willing to leave town without being sure?”, Dean was looking for reassurance.

Sam scrubbed the palms of his hands against his eyes in frustration. “No.”

“Me neither.” Dean punched the mattress with his left fist.

“Ok, fine, we’ll just be smart about this. The cops can’t know about the Impala. I’ll head over to Betty’s place and see what I can see from the outside, right? If I don’t see anything weird, we assume it was just bad timing. You...wait here, call the office for another night and, uh, I’ll bring food. Sound good?”

Dean threw up his hands in helpless submission.

Sam showered, changed, and put a small bag together while Dean set up his computer at the room’s requisite rickety mini-table and chairs and nursed an oversized mug of what Sam hoped was bad coffee. 

“Oh! Hey, I forgot my phone charger. I’ll pick one up while I’m out, but can I borrow your phone ‘til then?”

Dean sighed, “fine.” He leaned so that he could retrieve his phone from his back pocket, but this wound up upsetting the old table too much and the mug fell, crashing to the floor and smashing into several big pieces. The contents, which Sam now knew to be Whisky, pooled darkly around the pieces. Dean took an angry breath, closed his eyes, and appeared to be counting silently.

Sam reached for Dean’s phone quietly and slipped it into his coat. “Uh, sorry. Sorry. Bye."

The younger Winchester adjusted the mirrors and seat of the Impala with a little sadness. After growing up with the father that they had, Sam knew better than to bring up Dean’s drinking. Sam understood that, like John or even himself, the drinking was Dean’s way of blunting the dark truths of the world and helped take the edge off just long enough to get through the next few hours without really, much worse things happening. He just hated that Dean hadn’t been able to find reason to put the bottle away for a while now. If anything, it seemed to be getting worse.

  


Sam wound the Impala around Betty’s apartment block, slowly. Lots of windowed terraces, some well cared for and some not. Unfortunately for Sam, it looked like all access to the apartments was internal to the main building and he wouldn’t be able to see much just in passing. “Fuck,” Sam picked a shaded parking spot that faced the building and settled in to get an idea of foot traffic. Winchester fumbled in his bag for his sunglasses and then emptied the contents of his pants pockets into the bag, to make the sitting and waiting more comfortable. The bright yellow pages from Cas’s desk fell into the heap and Sam frowned at them. He clearly saw his name several times in the writing. 

“Not your papers, not your business,” Sam spoke to himself, gripping the steering wheel and focusing on the door to the apartment building. He stared at the big nothing that was happening in front of him for about five seconds before giving up and retrieving the paper. “You’re a trash human being, Sam Winchester,” the man told himself as he unfolded the packet, searching for the part with his name all over it. It appeared to be in a really rough patch of text with lots of words scratched out, underlined, and arrows indicating lines to other thoughts.

_Sam. Tall, dark, and shy. No longer the boy with the demon blood, but a fierce and traumatized fighter. Sam taught me about faith and living with yourself after failure, bettering yourself, beyond your flaws. Sam doesn’t let himself love because every time he starts to, the object of his desire, she or he, gets killed. He blames himself and his sins for this but he shouldn’t. ~~Sam, sometimes I wish~~ I’ve wondered how our lives would have been different if I were sent to Sam instead? I hope that I could have helped him to see that those people were truly blessed to have his attention. I’ve wanted to tell him for so long that I’m sorry -_

That thought appeared to end abruptly. “Tell me you’re sorry about what, Cas?”, Sam flipped to the next page, which seemed to be completely unrelated and also very disorganized. He flipped back to the page he’d been reading, but started from the top of the page.

_Humans are born with emotions and it is difficult for them to sort through all of it. It is even more difficult for an outsider to learn to live with them. Regret. Shame. Remorse. Depression. Fear. For a time I could not go back to Heaven because I was hunted. Then I feared facing the chaos I caused. I was worried I’d kill myself if I saw it with my own eyes. The Winchesters helped me deal with that. I didn’t realize then that the medicine would be worse than the disease._

“I let myself love, ok?”, Sam lied aloud to the pages, turning them to unsuccessfully try and decipher some writing along the margins. “You’re welcome by the way. I’m glad you found me such an educational failure of a human being.”

Sam flipped another page to find the text _I watched Dean with Anna. I never thought I’d admit that I did_ as a flurry of motion near the front of the building caught his peripheral, dragging his attention reluctantly from the page to see Dean exiting the apartment building. 

“Wait, angel Anna?” Sam was frustrated that he lost his place on the page, but that was just enough time for it to click that Sam had seen Dean exiting the apartment. “Dean?” Sam looked at the building and down to the pages a few times before he threw down the pages reluctantly and sprang from the car and ran toward the apartment entrance. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Sam called out to Dean. Dean saw Sam, smiled, and sprinted down the sidewalk. Sam set off in pursuit, but due to his lead, Dean disappeared around the side of the building. When Sam attempted the turn, he ran smack into someone and they both fell to the street.

It was Sam who got to his feet first. “I’m so, so sorry”, he held a hand out to the unfortunate person on their ass in front of him. A very soft hand accepted his and it was attached to a very beautiful woman in a very smart suit. She had bright red hair and large brown eyes.

“It’s okay,” the woman tried to wipe some dirt from the back seat of her pants. “You must have been chasing the guy that ran past me?’

“Uh, Yeah.”

“Better luck next time?” The woman smiled apologetically and set off around the curb.

Sam fished in his coat pocket for Dean’s phone and entered his number. The phone recognized the number as it was labeled under 'Sammy' and the phone dialed. There were two rings before the call picked up.

“Why am I ‘Jerk’ in your phone?”, Dean answered.

“Where are you?!” 

“At the hotel, where I’m hiding from the police”, Dean spoke in faux happiness.

“We got problems Dean. Our kind of problems”.


End file.
